Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 75 for the weeks January 20th - January 26th, 2008. In this issue we cover the upcoming Alpha 4 freeze, the release of 6.06.2 LTS, MOTU Council elections, an Ubuntu Demo Day in Swindon, UK, upcoming Hug Day, Full Circle Magazine #9, the Launchpad logo competition, and, as always, much much more!

General Community News

Alpha 4 Freeze Ahead

Hardy Alpha 4 is expected to be released Thursday, January 31.

Hardy Alpha 4 will again use a "soft freeze" for main, meaning developers are asked to refrain from uploading packages between Tuesday and Thursday which won't bring us closer to releasing the alpha, so that these days can be used for settling the archive and fixing any remaining showstoppers.

6.06.2 LTS Released

This is the second maintenance release of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, which continues to be supported with maintenance updates and security fixes until June 2009 on desktops and June 2011 on servers. This maintenance release focuses on improving hardware support for popular server platforms, including updated server installation media.

Over 600 post-release updates have been integrated, so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation, and a number of bugs in the installation system have been corrected. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.

All nominees have linked their homepages (which contain more information about them) from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/Council - it's a good time to get informed today. Developers have till 2008-01-31 to vote.

Ubuntu Demo Day, Swindon, UK

An Ubuntu Demo Day will be held from 10am on Saturday 26 April at the Museum of Computing in Swindon. Local publicity will be aimed at telling people about Ubuntu, allowing them to try it out on the demo machines, and giving out Live CDs. Screencasts and videos will be running on a large-screen projector.

The event and on-site parking is free. There are plenty of activities nearby including children's activities, shopping, and outdoor activities.

If anyone would like to help at this event, please contact Dianne Reuby (pramclub at yahoo.co.uk) - our main need will be for experienced users to talk to non-users and answer their questions.

Hug Day January 29th, 2008

The next Hug day of the new year will be held Tuesday 29th of January. The Desktop team has uploaded the new Nautilus to Hardy, which is using gvfs (a gnome-vfs replacement). Since this is a new feature, brave bugtesters are needed, so the bug day will be focus on Nautilus bug reports. ﻿New bug reports will be triaged, confirming that the old Nautilus bugs are still reproducible with the new one and asking reporters to test their bugs with it. The event will be held in #ubuntu-bugs on Freenode. The list of targeted bugs and tasks is posted at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20080129﻿

In The Press

How to Develop Virtual Appliances Using Ubuntu JeOS - Virtual appliances are an effective and convenient way to distribute applications, whether it's an open source application stack or a commercial product. Ubuntu JeOS (pronounced" juice") is an efficient variant of the Ubuntu Server operating system, configured specifically for virtual appliances. JeOS is a specialized installation of Ubuntu Server Edition with a tuned kernel that only contains the base elements needed to run within a virtualized environment. For installation instructions and where to download, visit the link. http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4829/

Running Linux on the Samsung Q1U UMPC - There are two main choices for anyone looking to convert a Q1U to Linux: the full desktop version of Ubuntu or Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded. If you're looking to convert a Q1U to something resembling the N800's big brother and don't mind losing Windows in the process, UME may be for you. The advantage is that the Samsung Q1U is the main test platform for this project, so hardware support is good. This article however deals with a full install of Ubuntu alongside Windows so that you can boot into either OS. To summarize, create a bootable USB pendrive (since the Q1U lacks a CD drive), partition the hard drive 50/50, and installed Ubuntu in the empty space. This article summarizes the authors experiences with the desktop, mutimedia, wifi, touchscreen, inking, suspend/hibernate, battery life, and performance. http://www.tabletpcreview.com/default.asp?newsID=1070

IBM Accelerates Desktop Customer Choice With Support for Ubuntu, Red Hat and Novell Software - IBM has announced that it will offer an integrated Open Collaboration Client Solution with support for Ubuntu. By combining the innovative user experience of the Ubuntu platform with the re-designed Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Symphony, customers will experience greater ease-of-use and comprehensive management of the desktop. Full support for Ubuntu within Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony is planned with Lotus Notes 8.5 in the second half of 2008. "IBM's plans to deliver the IBM Open Collaboration Client Solution with Lotus Notes on the Ubuntu platform is a win for customers everywhere," said Mark Murphy, vice president of alliances, Canonical. http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0350885.htm

Lotus Notes 8.5 to fully support Ubuntu Linux 7.10 in mid-2008 - In an announcement this week at the Lotusphere 2008 conference in Orlando, IBM said that it will provide full support for Ubuntu Linux with Lotus Notes 8.5 and Lotus Symphony using its Open Collaboration Client software, which is based on open standards. Antony Satyadas, chief competitive marketing officer for IBM Lotus, said the Ubuntu support for Notes and Symphony were a direct response to demand from customers. "We're doing pilots with customers now," Satyadas said. "Some of the requests came from big companies" with as many as 100,000 users that are interested in moving to Ubuntu on the desktop. "The other thing we are seeing is some interesting patterns evolving here," he said. "It starts with a very small company looking at Linux, and then there are really large companies that are starting out small with 500 [Linux desktop] users, then moving up to 2,000 or more. That is the pattern we are seeing." For the past six years or so, some prognosticators have predicted that Linux on the corporate desktop was finally ready, but the move has never taken hold in a major way. Satyadas said IBM thinks that this year, it will happen. "All the stars are lining up," he said. "Everybody has been saying that since 2001 except IBM. We never said that, but we are saying that now." "We are putting our money where our mouth is," Satyadas said. "We think now the time is really [here]" and the needed business applications are available to make it work for corporations. "Linux is cool now," he said. "We use it ourselves. We are able to offer a secure, rich and cost-effective Microsoft alternative."http://tinyurl.com/2dj5qz

Dell releases new Ubuntu-powered laptop: XPS 1330n - Linux laptop users suffering from Apple MacBook Air envy now have a chic, hot laptop to call their own: the Dell XPS 1330n with pre-installed Ubuntu 7.10. On Jan. 23, Dell announced that it was releasing the Dell XPS 1330n to the European market. In addition, for the first time, Dell is allowing its customers in Spain to order this and other PCs with pre-loaded Ubuntu Linux. The Ubuntu-equipped XPS 1330 will be available to North American customers the first week of the February. Standard specs are: Intel Duo Core T5450, HD's from 120GB to 320GB, a backlit 13.3-inch WXGA with 1280 by 800 resolution, Integrated Intel Graphic Media Accelerator X3100, FireWire, VGA, Fast Ethernet, HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface), two USB ports, 8-in-1 memory card reader, and for memory, you can choose from 1GB to 4GB of dual-channel 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM. With power, looks, and Ubuntu, it seems likely that the XPS 1330n is destined to be the first high-end Linux-powered laptop to reach a large audience. http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5605271273.html

A Guide to Ubuntu Linux - Open source means lots of people and resources can help, but here's a reference for both beginners and the experienced. Picking a distribution gets a lot less challenging when you remember to choose based on where you plan to go for help. There is lots of useful online documentation for specific tasks. But so far, books offer the best introductions to basic concepts such as file permissions or working with the shell. And looking for the distribution's name in the title of your first Linux book can be a time and frustration saver for new users. Part of Ubuntu's popularity among user group members is because it nails down and documents many of the best system administration practices. A new user who installs Ubuntu and does things the Ubuntu way will find himself or herself acting in many ways like a cautious, experienced system administrator without realizing it. http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141752-c,linux/article.html

In The Blogosphere

Why Changing the Name of the Ubuntu Distros is a Bad Idea - Recently there have been several posts on different blogs about changing the name of Ubuntu and it's derivatives Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu to things like Ubuntu GNOME Edition, Ubuntu KDE Edition, Ubuntu XFCE Edition and Ubuntu Educational Edition. Somebody even went so far as to suggest Ubuntu G, Ubuntu K, Ubuntu X and Ubuntu E. That idea is even more absurd. There is no need to change the names of these distros as they are all identified as an Ubuntu based distro with the ubuntu part of the name.http://sonoftheclayr.info/?a=view&id=11

In Other News

Full Circle Issue 9 Available

Full Circle - The Independent Ubuntu Community Magazine is proud to announce the release of issue nine containing:

Ubuntu Women

Long and fruitful discussion on the list early in the month about how technical Ubuntu Women should be as a team. No clear resolution, but it's clear that there are many strong and useful opinions within the group about how to deal with inequality, many of which can be implemented simultaneously.